Be a Tease

You’ve spent time, money and effort in marketing your association, now how do you make the conversion?  Getting potential members to come to your website is only half the battle.  Once you’ve lured them in, you need to be able to close the deal.  In some respects, you’re so close, yet so far away from securing a new member into your association.  How do you make the conversion?  We’ve written before about some of the many obstacles associations face in this constantly changing environment.  One powerful way to seal the deal is to tease what full membership into your association has to offer, showing off why they need your association in their life.  Some ways to do this are:

Provide teaser content to your member-restricted articles: When it comes to your presence on the web, the great content you provide is the main attraction for members to sign up, and keep coming back.  Why not give potential members a taste of what they’re missing out on by not being a member?  Allow them to read a paragraph, or maybe even two or three to whet their appetites.

Encourage Sponsorship: Encouraging veteran members to sponsor new members is an often overlooked tactic, but one that comes with a plethora of benefits to your association.  First, it will give all those lookie-loos full access to what your association has to offer.  Second, it encourages and builds strong networking opportunities for your members.  Having another member reach out to someone, say a graduate sponsoring someone from their alma mater, will make new members feel both welcomed and wanted into your association.

Offer a free trial period: This might be one of the oldest tactics around, but that’s because it’s an effective one.  Offering trial periods to potential members will allow them unfettered access to what your association has to offer, and will demonstrate how powerful of a tool membership can be for them.  You do want to make sure that your trial period is long enough for potential members to get accustomed to having it in their life, that way, once the trial period ends, they’ll view joining as a necessity, not just a luxury.

Teasing what full membership offers can be one of the most powerful tools you have in your arsenal to gain new members.  But once you have those members, how do you make sure you keep them?  And how do you re-engage with members who have been less active in your association’s community?  Not to be a tease, but those questions will be tackled next time.

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